Gold rush: Hocker stuns 1,500; Thomas tops 200

ESPN News Services

Aug 6, 2024, 03:17 PM ET

SAINT-DENIS, France — One race ended with a shocker; the other was pure dominance.

American Cole Hocker pulled the upset of the Olympic track meet Tuesday night, outracing favorites Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Josh Kerr to the finish line for the gold medal in the 1,500 meters.

A short while later, American Gabby Thomas dominated the women’s 200 meters, finishing in 21.83 seconds to add a gold to the bronze she took home in the event from Tokyo three years ago.

“I mean, this is six years in the making, at least,” Thomas said. “And all of it was for this moment. My coach told me everything I’ve done at this point — Tokyo Olympics, world championships — it was for this.”

Hocker won the 1,500 meters in an Olympic-record 3 minutes, 27.65 seconds, pulling from fifth to first over the final 300 meters to beat his personal best by more than 3 seconds.

He beat Kerr by .14 seconds, while Ingebrigtsen, who set the pace through the first 1,200 meters, ended up in fourth in a time faster than his Olympic record set in Tokyo.

“This may be an upset to a lot of people, but if you’ve been following my season, you knew I was capable of it,” Hocker said. “But still, things had to go my way today.”

American Yared Nuguse also set a personal best to win the bronze.

“I remember, 200 [meters] to go, seeing Cole and being like, ‘I feel good. I know he feels good. We could do something crazy huge here,'” Nuguse said. “So, I feel like at that last 200, I was like, I know it’s right in front of me. And that was really just a moment of digging down really deep and just getting it done.”

Hocker’s victory was the first U.S. win in the metric mile since Matt Centrowitz took gold in 2016. It was the first time Americans put two men on the podium for the 1,500 since the Stockholm Games in 1912.

“I just told myself, ‘Don’t be soft. You’ve got to go with it or you’re going to regret this for the rest of your life if you don’t go with it,'” Hocker said of the final 200 meters.

With a narrow opening along the inside of Lane 1, Hocker decided around the 100-meter mark to use it to glide past Kerr and take the late lead. But ask him about it now and he can’t tell you why he made the decision. It was sort of a spur-of-the-moment kind of move.

“I’m honestly not sure how that played out, how that last 100 played out,” Hocker said. “Wait, did the rail open up?”

When told he passed Kerr on the inside, Hocker added: “I honestly did not remember. I just feel like it was instinct, evidently.”

The race had been billed as a showdown between Ingebrigtsen and Kerr, with the Norwegian setting a hot pace as he led coming into the last 200.

Ingebrigtsen darted to the front quickly and ran there for the first 3½ laps, while Kerr traded between second and third, getting ready for his typical windup and a potential slingshot past Ingebrigtsen over the closing stretch, much the way Kerr did last year to win gold at the world championships.

While that was playing out, Hocker, at 5-foot-9½ and more than 3½ inches shorter than the top two contenders, almost looked as if he was trying to photobomb the end of this race.

He snuck up on the inside once, only to have Ingebrigtsen block that move. Hocker then tried again with about 50 meters left, passed them both and crossed the line with his arms outstretched and a look of disbelief on his face before thumping his chest twice to celebrate a win hardly anyone saw coming.

“I kind of figured it would be fast,” Hocker, 23, said. “I figured Ingebrigtsen would want to take it out of guys like me. But I knew I hadn’t been tested at this level yet, and I knew I was capable of being as strong as any of those guys out there.”

Hocker, out of the University of Oregon, was listed at as much as a 30-1 long shot for this race.

In the women’s 200, Thomas burst into the lead for good at the curve and was never challenged down the stretch, finishing well clear of Olympic 100-meter champion Julien Alfred of St. Lucia, who was 0.25 seconds off the pace in 22.08.

“The only thing I needed to do was get the lead. Get the lead and then finish strong,” Thomas, 27, said of coach Tonja Buford-Bailey’s last-minute advice. “And I did that.”

The Harvard graduate grabbed her head with both hands after winning.

“You prepare for this moment and you train so hard for this moment, but when it actually comes, it’s indescribable, and I couldn’t believe it,” Thomas said. “I never would have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would become an Olympic gold medalist. And I am one, and I’m still wrapping my head around that.”

Brittany Brown of the U.S. got the bronze in 22.20, 0.02 seconds in front of Dina Asher-Smith of Britain, who was another hundredth of a second ahead of her teammate Daryll Neita.

Out of three sprints so far on the purple track at Stade de France, the Americans have picked up two golds: Thomas followed Noah Lyles in the men’s 100 to the top step of the podium.

Thomas entered as the favorite, especially after reigning world champion Shericka Jackson of Jamaica dropped out with an apparent injury.

After Thomas earned her degree at Harvard in neurobiology and global health, she enrolled at the University of Texas, where she earned a master’s in public health for studying sleep patterns of different ethnic groups — while also making the wise choice to double down on her track training.

The decision was to set up a six-year schedule, with the long-term aim being this race in Paris.

Thomas didn’t want the Paris Games to be her first Olympics, so she did what it took to get herself to Tokyo. That happened — and her takeaways from that trip to Japan were third place in the 200, a silver medal in the 4×100 relay and, perhaps most valuable of all, the experience.

“I feel like I’ve worked very hard and everything has been a part of the plan. This has been a six-year plan, ever since moving to Texas,” Thomas said. “We’ve been working hard every day for this, so I earned it. But it’s still an unbelievable, indescribable feeling.”

She’ll have a chance for another medal as part of the 4×100 relay team, which could be in the final Saturday.

ESPN’s Coley Harvey, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.